What tool can i use to get the true speed of my site

[ClaireH-184886]

hi, i am trying to get the true speed of my site. i want to know how fast www.in2town.co.uk is but the tools that i am using are giving me different readings.

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/DkHoNWmZh/www.in2town.co.uk says the speed is 1.03s

http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.in2town.co.uk/i4EMDk34  says my speed is 2.25s

and http://www.vertain.com/m.q?req=cstr&reqid=dAv79lt8  says it is 4.36s

so as you can see i am confused. I am trying to get the site as fast as possible, but need to know what the correct speed is so i can work on things that need changing to make it faster.

can anyone also let me know what speed i should be working for.

many thanks

[jgower]

Well, they're all going to be at different locations, going through different routes to get to your site.  It can also make a difference what is the load on your server at the time.  I like to use one that allow for multiple URLs like

http://seobyindia.com/tools/website_speed_test.php (just found on google, couldn't find the one i've used in the past)

This way you can get a good picture by doing 10 tests in a row...average them then there ya go.  I had to do this when we moved servers to get an idea of the speed increase we received.

[Sean_Dawes]

See all these external resources but do not see a mention of using Google Analytic's site speed reporting which is within your GA dashboard. See you use GA for this site, so take a peak in there and see what it is showing you.

[ClaireH-184886]

hi tried using the website above but when i press continue nothing happens

[RyanKent]

My preference is Alertra: www.alertra.com. It's free and easy to use.

It checks from 6 points in the US and 1 in the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and China.

[jgower]

Sorry about that, I should have looked, was in a hurry...the good news is I found the one that I love!

http://www.selfseo.com/website_speed_test.php

Again, the main reason I like it is because I can put in my own website 10 times, so that it's not a fluke if it's slow/fast at a certain time...

[ClaireH-184886]

just tried this tool http://www.alertra.com/spotcheck_do and it seems my site is slower in the uk than in america. tried it on a few tools and found that my site in america comes up on average of around 1 second while testing it from london comes in at around three seconds, which is not great as my site is aimed at the uk.

This is down to my site being hosted in america as i could not find a good uk hosting company.

[RyanKent]

Correct. Your site should load fastest in areas closest to your web server.

If you are specifically targeting the UK, I recommend you take another look at locating a UK host. What is your criteria for a "good" host?

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi ryan

I use tmd hosting, and what they provide for me is, they when required upload a template that i can then work on to the hosting package, if the site goes down for whatever reason they sort it out straight away (although it is something they have done but not happened for two years),

I spent six months trying to find a uk host but could not find one. I spoke to many of them and they were not offering the service that i required. I was thinking about 1and1 but they did not offer many services so until i can find a decent uk host i am stuck with the old host, but i am still looking as my target audience is in the UK